More
firms will ditch annual reviews in favor of continuous performance
feedback

Fifteen years ago, when consulting firm Accenture envisioned the
future workplace, it saw employees wearing “geo‑badges” so it could
track them anywhere, anytime through a network of infrared sensors.

That particular prediction didn’t pan out. Thanks to other
technologies, however, corporate employees are usually connected and
accessible 24/7. And IoT sensors are everywhere, including offices.
Deloitte estimates 1.3 billion sensors will be operating in
commercial spaces by 2020.

In the near term, what emerging tech and management trends will
shape organizational life in 2019? Based on interviews with analysts
and other experts, here are the four trends we see achieving critical
mass in 2019.

Freelancer platforms move in-house

In recent years, many organizations have started to source
contractors on external platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, and
Freelancer.com. They pay for the privilege, via subscriptions or a cut
of the worker’s fee. Upwork reports that 12 million contractors
currently hang a shingle on their site. Fiverr logs one
million hiring transactions each month.

Increasingly, companies are cutting out the middleman with the goal
of lowering costs and better integrating contract workers with
full‑time staffers.

Many big companies have already created freelance marketplaces to
fill their contingent hiring needs, including Accenture, Aon,
Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Microsoft, KPMG, and PwC. Faced with the
long‑term reality of a blended workforce, expect more organizations to
launch their own contractor platforms in 2019.

The reason: A sharp rise in the use of gig workers. More than 90% of business leaders say they use external
workers, according to a State of the Workforce survey of 1,000
executives by Toptal. Most expect their reliance on freelancers will
grow significantly over the next five years.

Currently, 36% of the U.S. workforce (roughly 57 million people) are
freelancers, according to the World Economic Forum, which predicts
that the majority of workers will be contractors by
2027. The blended workforce is here—and it’s here to stay.

“Many leading organizations are creating freelance talent‑management
platforms,” says Avinav Trigunait, a research director at IDC. “This
will actually have a huge impact on how organizations source and
manage talent.”

Benefits get personal

In January 2019, General Mills will roll out new benefits for its
40,000 full‑time employees to meet “the needs of an ever‑evolving
workforce.” These include paid caregiver leave, the option to work
from home while a pet recovers from surgery, and even the flexibility
to ditch work midday for a doctor’s appointment.

General Mills isn’t alone. More than half of large companies offered
personalized benefit plans in 2018, and an
additional 14% said they plan to do so in the future, according to the
Thomsons Global Employee Benefits Watch report.

The demand for personalized benefits has never been higher. Nearly
one in three employees surveyed by Thomsons say they ask about
benefits in first‑round interviews. And 91% of employees at small and
medium‑sized companies view benefit options as key to their job
satisfaction, according to a 2018 TriNet survey.

“Cafeteria‑style” benefit plans have been around for almost 20
years, according to Amit Mohindra, founder and CEO of People Analytics
Success (and former head of people analytics at Apple). “Benefits have
long been a slow‑moving, traditional thing,” he adds. “Now heads of HR
are looking at data analytics and saying, ‘Why not use that to drive benefits?’”

As companies embrace new AI tools like Glint, TINYpulse, Workify, and
others to help them track employee satisfaction, HR benefit managers
have access to a slew of data‑driven insights into which offerings are
most likely to keep workers happy.

Workers are more likely to stay at companies that offer such plans.
And with better analytics, employers can allocate benefits more strategically.

“There’s money on the table if benefits are not being optimized,” he
says. “If you can optimize supply and demand, you’re going to save money.”

Virtual assistants grow up

Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and other voice assistants are starting to make
the shift from consumer playthings to increasingly useful workplace tools.

In 2019, 40% of businesses with 500 employees or more
expect to integrate virtual assistants or AI chatbots on internal
infrastructure, a Spiceworks study reveals. In large part, virtual
assistants are reaching a tipping point in the enterprise because
natural language processing (NLP) technology has finally grown up.

“The technology is mature now,” says IDC's Trigunait. “For years,
how we communicated with computers was very command‑driven. Now,
thanks to advances in NLP, we’re moving towards naturally interactive computing.”

Voice‑assistant providers are making it easier than ever to
integrate their tech into popular enterprise tools like Slack, Skype,
and Hangouts.

“Voice as an interface is getting embedded into a lot of enterprise
applications,” Trigunait explains. “All the large enterprise
technology players are doing it. The technology is really going to
make collaboration much more interactive.”

Among companies using voice AIs, nearly half (46%) are using them
for voice‑to‑text dictation, 26% for team collaboration, and 24% for
schedule management.

But with the voice market growing exponentially—from $113 million in 2015
to a projected $994 million by 2024—we can expect virtual assistants
to play an even greater role in everything from project management to
providing actionable business insights.

Manager as coach

What do bosses expect of their employees? Half of employees report
that they’re not sure, according to a recent Gallup study.
Just 14% of employees feel that traditional performance reviews
inspire them to improve their job performance.

Today, many large companies are ditching annual reviews in favor of
continuous performance feedback. Increasingly, managers are also
taking on a coaching role focused on guiding employee behavior rather
than outcomes.

Expect this trend to pick up steam next year. Within three years, 35% of businesses will have replaced traditional
KPIs (key performance indicators) with KBIs (key behavioral
indicators) to measure collaboration, communication, problem‑solving
skills, deliverables, and objectives, according to IDC’s Future of
Work 2019 Predictions.

AI‑enabled assessment tools such as Fuel50, Ambit, Humu, and Trybe
are designed to support the manager‑as‑coach model. They offer
managers job performance metrics and “nudges” they can use to
recognize employee achievements in real time.

The other reason data‑driven coaching is gaining traction is that
more employees want it. “It’s cultural now,” says Mohindra. “Almost
everyone has a Fitbit or Apple Watch and they’re more used to seeing
data about themselves and trying to get better. It’s not a stretch now
to provide that information about work performance.”